GG Andreou

Elena Andreou taught literature in Nicosia secondary schools for twenty years and did not play a serious match until she was thirty-four, when a café game on the Larnaca seafront turned into something else entirely. Within a decade she was the strongest woman player on the island. She writes a strategy column that is gentle in tone and merciless in content.

She has no competitive instinct at all, which at this level is close to unheard of. She does not want to beat you, she wants to see the position played correctly, and she will wait a very long time while you fail to do it. Afterwards she says something kind, and means it. Twenty years in front of a classroom taught her that the person opposite will usually hurry themselves into the mistake if you let them.